Aging is a normal process, and there is no way to keep the
body from aging with each tick of the clock.

Time moves on, the years pass and we age. However, that does
not mean that we have to give up on the miracle and wonders of life (giving up
on the excitement of life would encourage the "growing old process").

Life is a continual growing process, and it is when we cease
to be fully alive and continue to grow as a person, that we not only age, but
we grow old.

Do you smile when you hear the silly laughter of children?
If not, you are growing old.

Does a beautiful sunset touch an inner part of your being?
If not, you are growing old.

Do you recognize the breaking through of the soil by a seed
as a true miracle? If not, you are growing old.

Aging is normal. Growing old indicates a retreat from life
and living.

Strive to be interested and interesting. Life is the
greatest treasure that any one of us will ever have. Personal growth, and being
fully alive, should be our daily mantra, regardless of our age.

Remember, if you are content to grow old, just act your age.

Joseph Gluzinski

Tillamook

Southwest corridor planning

Regarding the article "Voters asked to put up a roadblock"
(Jan. 6):

Because of the hills and historic location of major roads,
Southwest Portland is difficult to get around by car. We only have Macadam
Avenue, Barbur Boulevard and Beaverton-Hillsdale Highway. Add Boones Ferry Road
via Terwilliger Boulevard (from Barbur). Each of these roads is already at
capacity during rush hours. This is a problem. It's made worse for people like
me, who live near downtown, because the traffic signals are set to favor
commuters from farther out. Even worse, people cut through my neighborhood and
further clog up the little access we have. It can easily take more than five
minutes just to get onto one of these roads. You don't want to drive here when
Interstate 5 backs up.

I wish the Portland Bureau of Transportation would start to
think about those of us who live here, rather than those who only pass through.

Thank you for this timely editorial — a call to keep Portland
Portland. I regularly attend West Quadrant Plan Stakeholder Advisory Committee
meetings offering a Downtown/West End resident perspective (one not on the
committee). I am worried the WQPSAC is heading in a direction destroying
Portland's historic fabric.

I welcome growth and development, but I also have come to
feel protective of the more than 80 pre-1935 West End historic buildings still
standing. After completing a historic building inventory, my appreciation grew.
The story of Portland from 1880-1935 is brilliantly revealed in its
architecture, "making Portland Portland" and unique. Designed by many famous
local architects, much of the architecture is distinctly Northwest.

As Portland continues attracting people, shouldn't we
analyze what brings them here? For me, it was the beautiful, human-scale,
livable, urban architecture in the West End, giving the impression that
Portland valued its history. These threatened buildings are part of what makes
Portland "a keeper." We all should pay attention.

Wendy Rahm

Southwest Portland

Alexis de Tocqueville

Louis Sargent deftly cherry-picks passages from de
Tocqueville's "Democracy in America" and uses them in circular reasoning to
prove his point that we are being oppressed by the "nanny state" (Letters, Jan.
8).

When de Tocqueville visited America in the early 19th
century, our experiment in democracy was barely 50 years old. If you read his
entire treatise, he also warned of the tyranny of the majority and noted that
"crass individualism" and "market capitalism" had already taken root here to an
extraordinary degree, adding that in such conditions we lose interest in the
future of our descendants. Prescient indeed.

Our individual freedom is certainly fettered and curtailed
by federal, state and local laws, as any civil society requires, but the notion
that our government actively seeks to keep us all in perpetual childhood or act
as a "shepherd looking after a flock of timid animals" is ridiculous. Organized
religion capably handles that function.

If Sargent believes that the "free agency of man" is being
rendered useless by this despotic democratic government, what does he suggest
as an alternative?

Are we to trust the pure, selfless charity of human nature
to provide for the common good and ensure our children's future? Good luck with
that.